CloudAustin February Virtual Meetup: The Future of CloudAustin

CloudAustin February Meeting: The Future of CloudAustin

This meeting will be a moderated group discussion about the future of CloudAustin.

Context (also sent to the group in email):

The Challenge

The long virtual spell during the pandemic has definitely taken its toll on excitement about user groups. Many of the other user groups in the area have gone on hiatus or closed up shop entirely; we've been plugging along with modest attendance and difficulty getting in the kind of speakers (practitioners sharing their implementations and struggles) that are our lifeblood. We've tried to punch it up with alternate formats (virtual whiteboarding, openspaces, lean coffees) but those take additional work from the organizers, and to be honest many of the organizers are tired too - few on the organizer team remain engaged and fewer still have significant time to invest in the meetup. On a personal note as the remaining original organizer, I've been running CloudAustin for more than 10 years and while it's been rewarding, I kinda want to step back and take a break myself.

The Opportunity

But the role of CloudAustin and the future of the Austin tech community are brighter than ever. Tens of thousands of techies are settling in the Austin area. CloudAustin has always been that umbrella group that's been happy to launch and promote new user groups when a given technology or whatnot is hot enough for people to meet on it, and to be a place to hear a little about those topics when their time has run its course. And besides having wide arms for the kinds of technologies we cover, we've also welcomed all kinds of people into the community. We're not beholden to a company or sponsors, we have been about practitioners talking to practitioners, for developers, devops, QA, managers, doc folks, and many more.

The Austin way has, in my opinion, been one of the things that has accelerated the meteoric rise of tech here in Central Texas. All our meetups (not just CloudAustin) have been distinguished by a focus on sharing, collaboration, and respect that is rare and is, to be blunt, very different from the Silicon Valley tech meetup scene. As we get folks moving into town, it's important to have gatherings that focus on these things to show people why they're moving here, and how great it is to be focused on building each other up, and teach them the Austin way.

So I personally think CloudAustin is needed now more than ever!

The Plan

In the short term, till we're out of the stage 4-5 range on COVID, we'll have to go back to virtual meetings, and because of the general organizer burnout we'd like to move to a quarterly format so we can actually put decent work into making the meetings engaging and not burning y'all out on yet another zoom meeting.

But we also want to start building for the future, which involves searching for a venue, getting new organizers to replace those of us that need to step back, and get in new ideas of how to get the CloudAustin word out to more people and recruit practitioner speakers! We've been doing largely the same thing for a decade and some of that may be dated. We do want to start back to in person meetups as soon as we can, and have you and people like you come and share what you've been doing and how you've been doing it with your fellow community members. We have thoughts about leveraging social media and other channels more to inform more folks about CloudAustin's doings, but we would need help with executing on that and also want y'all's ideas!

We're not really interested in switching formats to allowing vendor talks, having remote speakers all the time, etc. - we've always focused on being a place where Austinites share their work with other Austinites not just to educate but to build relationships.

What Do You Want For the Austin Technologist Community?

But, we want to hear from you what you want for the future! Several years ago when there were lots of user groups and everything was going gangbusters we had a similar inflection point and sat down with the community and asked "So should we just close up shop, that's what we'd propose?" and you all gave us a very clear "no" and an explanation of the things that CloudAustin uniquely provides to the community. The meetup is yours, we're just the people doing the busy work to make it happen! So this February's meeting will be a moderated discussion about the state of the community, what you want in CloudAustin going forward, and how we can actually make that happen.

We will also be looking to recruit some new organizers in the months to come - the primary requirement there is actual engagement in the meetings, and then the passion and time to help!

Thanks,
Ernest Mueller
CloudAustin Organizer